


Crisis Management (or Just Another Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)

by pocky_slash



Category: Eureka
Genre: 5 Times, Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five minor crises that cemented Jack and Henry's friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crisis Management (or Just Another Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to quackerscooper for the read through, quatredeathlady for the ideas, and iTunes for having "All That Glitters" available for download. There is a longer story in one of these that I tried to write, but was just far too epic in nature to be finished in a month. I hope I did these guys justice, and I hope you liked your story :)
> 
> Written for Signe

Jack was never going to get used to living in Eureka. Rather, he was pretty sure he was never going to get used to some aspects of living there, such as being physically thrown out of bed by his _house_ because the town's mechanic was downstairs and--

"A giant _robot_?" Jack asked for the third time.

"Well, an AI, technically," Henry said. "And whether or not it's giant is really based on--"

"There is a giant robot attacking the town," Jack said flatly.

"Right now it's only GD but... yes. There is a giant robot attacking the town."

Jack regarded Henry critically. He understood that there was always going to be a certain element of "let's get the new guy" in any situation; he'd been hazed more than once over the years. He wouldn't be surprised if the geniuses were taking offense to a regular joe with no scientific experience making a home in their bizarre little utopia, enough to play some tricks on him. Still, with what he'd seen so far in this town, he wasn't sure what to think. Sure, it might be a clever ploy to get him to run through town telling everyone they had to evacuate on account of a giant robot, but it was just as likely that there really was something attacking GD that needed his attention. Also, Henry Deacon seemed like one of the most normal people he'd met so far. He'd expect it from that Stark guy, but not from Henry.

"Okay," Jack said. "Giant robot. What kind of firepower are we talking about here?"

Henry pulled out what looked like blueprints. "Well, Jo is already stuck inside GD after an attempt to dismantle it based on its creator's instructions, but I have an idea..."

Blueprints for a giant robot. And Jack thought he'd seen everything.

***

"There are no such thing as ghosts," Henry said.

"I _know_ ," Jack said. "I know that. And believe me, if I didn't know that, I would have figured it out the five millionth time that Allison or Stark or _Fargo_ rolled their eyes and told me as much when I was over at GD. But I know what I saw and I saw it _twice_ , and you seem like the guy most likely to help me."

Henry pursed his lips thoughtfully, and Jack had to stop himself from shifting his weight from foot to foot again. He was getting impatient. The first time he had seen the odd, spectral shape floating through the corridor on one of the lower levels of GD, he had convinced himself he was going crazy. The second time, however, there was no denying it, especially when it stared at him for a full ten seconds before floating into a locked room. He'd brought Allison down to look for it after Stark blew him off, but even she had given him a tolerant smile and a condescending pat on the back before going back to whatever she had been doing before.

But Henry would listen to him. He had to. After Henry, he was out of options.

"Can you describe what you saw exactly--better yet, let me get some equipment and you can take me down to where you saw it," Henry said. He was already gathering some things together and putting them in a bag. "While there's no such thing as ghosts, there may be some other phenomenon at work. Or, well..."

"Or I could just be crazy," Jack supplied.

Henry put his hands on Jack's shoulders and gave him a long, hard look. "You're not crazy, Jack," Henry said. "Sometimes I think you're the sanest person here."

Sometimes Jack thought that too, but it was nice to have the smartest guy around confirm it.

Henry smacked him on the shoulder. "Come on. We have a ghost to catch."

***

"It will never work!" Stark shouted over the din of the rushing water. "It doesn't even make any sense!"

"Do you have any other ideas?" Jack shouted back. If they didn't do something soon, they were all going to drown in the restroom, of all places. If they didn't drown, Jack was going to kill Fargo with his bare hands for getting them into this mess to begin with. What kind of an idiot tries to design a self-cleaning rest room and implements it without testing it first?

Although, he was really beginning to realize that Eureka was populated by a whole lot of geniuses who were exactly that kind of idiot.

"Let him try it, Nathan!" Henry yelled. "It just might work!" All three of them were standing on the top of the sinks in the men's room, a men's room sealed airtight thanks to Fargo's modifications. At least Zoe would get a kick out of explaining to everyone she knew that her father drowned in the bathroom.

"It's idiotic!" Stark called back. "It's even more idiotic than Carter usually is!"

"It can't hurt at this point!" Henry said. The water was getting dangerously close to the tops of their heads. "If we don't do something soon, we'll all be dead anyway!"

"It's useless!" Stark yelled.

There were maybe six inches between the top of the water and the ceiling, and at the rate it was filling up, it wouldn't be long before they were all underwater. Henry nodded at Jack.

"Go for it!" he shouted.

Jack took a deep breath and dove under the water. It wasn't hard to swim down into the toilet stalls and kick the flush down with his foot, although it was a bit more complicated getting _away_ from the stall as the water started to suck down into the toilets.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were soaking wet, panting hard, and on solid ground again. Stark said nothing as he finally managed to rewire the door to open, but Henry grinned at Jack, relieved.

"Thanks for backing me up back there," Jack said. "I know I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot either. Well, most of the time."

"You're not an idiot," Henry assured him. "You think outside of the box. We need more of that around this town."

"Thanks," Jack said. "You wanna go get a drink? I think getting drunk is the only way to properly deal with today."

Henry pulled off one of his shoes and poured what seemed to be a gallon of water out of it.

"Not a drink is good, too," Jack said weakly, and Henry just laughed and they sloshed out of Global Dynamics as fast as they could.

***

"I still don't know what went wrong with the fishing rods," Henry said.

"Neither do I, believe me," Jack muttered as he finally turned down the road towards Main Street. The fishing trip with Henry had seemed like a nice idea at the time--a little reward for solving the latest crisis--but he hadn't counted on Henry's high tech fishing equipment. Rather, he hadn't counted on Henry's high tech fishing equipment exploding and scaring away all of the fish when it blew a crater into their camp site. Jack's waders were never going to be the same again.

There seemed to be a rather large crowd at Cafe Diem when they pulled up, and Jack wondered idly if there was some kind of crazy special. Well, crazier than usual.

"Looks like Vincent's having a party," Jack said to Henry.

"I hope it's to celebrate getting rid of that awful tea he gave us on Friday when he ran out of coffee," Henry said. He pulled the thermos with "Cafe Diem" stenciled on it out of the back seat. They had poured out the tea after a taste and resorted to instant coffee for the rest of the weekend. It was one of many things that was making Jack a little cranky.

They made their way into the cafe by elbowing past the crowd outside. Jack expected to see a party going on, or at least a lot of very hungry people. What he hadn't expected to see was one dweeby looking guy sitting at the back as everyone in town listened raptly to--

"And that's how I won the regional chess championship."

There were many gasps in the audience and a smattering of applause. Everyone was staring at him in adoration. Jack was ready to dismiss it as a geek thing until he saw Zoe and Jo sitting near the back looking just as enraptured.

"Zoe?" he asked, frowning. Last he checked, Zoe didn't care about chess in the least.

"Dad!" she hissed. "Quiet! Anthony is going to start another story!"

"Oh, I hope it's the one about lecturing at MIT!" Jo whispered. "That one's just so... sexy."

"Tell me about it," Vincent said from behind Jack. He sighed as Jack turned around, folding his hands on the counter and resting his chin on top of them, staring at the guy in the back of the room dreamily. 

Jack looked at Henry. Henry looked at Jack.

"Is it just me, or are people acting a little weird?" Jack asked.

It didn't take Henry long, once they got back to his garage, to figure out it was a drug in the tea. It didn't take Jack long, once Henry figured that out, to apprehend Anthony Wallace and lock him in the Sheriff's office. With Wallace locked up and the tea confiscated, it didn't take long for the rest of the town to get over him. But the pictures that Jack and Henry took of the chaotic, emotional aftermath? Well, those were going to bring enjoyment for a long, long time.

***

Jack should have known the second he saw the second Henry's goatee. He just didn't think that real life could crib _that much_ from crappy scifi television.

He was sure this was right out of at least a dozen movies, though. The great stand-off between the hero, his friend, and the evil doppelganger, who had been smart enough to shave off the goatee once he realized he'd been figured out. Jack had a tranquilizer gun, and if he shot the wrong Henry, the other one would get away before he had a chance to shoot again.

Sometimes he hated this town.

"Come on, Stewart, you're cornered," Jack said. "If you just turn off the device and turn yourself in, things won't get messy."

"It's true, Stewart," one of the Henrys said. "Just give yourself up to Jack."

"Don't listen to him," the other Henry said. "It's a trick. I'm the real Henry, Jack. He's just trying to confuse you." 

"Both of you, shut the hell up!" Jack said. He had to think. Henry was his--well, Henry was his best friend. For better or for worse, Henry was the first person in Eureka who made him feel at home and the only person who didn't treat him as if he was completely mentally deficient. 

And. Wow. That was it.

"Oh, come on, Stewart," Jack said. "Allison and Stark are working on figuring out your doohickey as we speak. They told me all about how it shoots the ray shield thing into the light that... I don't know, something with our eyes and a mask. The particles. You know. They told me all about it."

The second Henry twitched, but Jack had to be sure.

"Oh yeah," he continued. "Like a big mirror that goes into our brain and makes us think that you're who you're projecting out. Like a radio."

The second Henry twitched again, more violently this time, and seemingly snapped. "You _idiot!_ It's nothing like that! It's genius! It's--"

Jack shot him with the tranquilizer gun. He was still sputtering scientific gibberish as the sedative took effective and he passed out.

The real Henry leaned down and checked his pulse, then pulled the device out of the fake Henry's pocket. He immediately flickered back into Travis Stewart, maligned GD radio technician.

"Good thinking, Jack," Henry said as he got to his feet. He clapped Jack on the shoulder. "But how did you know I wouldn't get just as frustrated?"

"Because you never do," Jack said simply. He knelt down and hoisted Stewart to his feet. "Come on. Let's get this guy in lock up so we can grab something to eat."

"My treat," Henry said.

Jack was beginning to like Eureka more and more with each passing day.

 


End file.
